


Cat and Rat: Reunited at Last

by Sathroe



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Setting, Catra (She-Ra) Has Magic, Catra and Adora taking care of each other (She-Ra), Catra is in Love with Adora (She-Ra), F/F, Mentioned Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Past Violence, Pre-Canon, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, i guess, sometimes it's about trust, the one where Catra (She-Ra) has a Pet Rat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sathroe/pseuds/Sathroe
Summary: The list of things Catra has considered hers has always been short, and Shadow Weaver was always quick to take away the ones she learned about. Well, the ones she deemed didn't have practical uses, but that worked out to everything except Catra's clothes and mask. So when Catra learns that there was knowledge and talent stripped from her as well, abilities deemed 'useless' by her tormentor, she comes up with a plan to use them to take something else back for herself. The first thing she was willing to admit to herself that she loved and her second friend, her pet rat.Adora is more than eager to help.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 31





	Cat and Rat: Reunited at Last

**Author's Note:**

> The actual scene of Catra and Adora going through the ritual together came to me in a dream and I knew I had to write it. Luckily I was right that it was pretty quick to write so it didn't add to my pile of WIPs and unstarted concepts. So if something about the premise or the way it integrates with canon feels off that's why, it's based on a dream and I wrote it in a day. Hopefully I get the emotions across

Catra’s every sensation was suffering. Her ears were ringing, head congested and thought slow as her every muscle ached as if with a full day’s strain, and skin tingled with memories of electricity and lashes. Her sense of time was nonexistent, a bubble of thought floated to the surface as she realized that she didn’t know where she was, where she was going, or how long she’d been going there. The bubble popped and the thought was forgotten as she realized it didn’t matter, she felt safer with every step she took, and nowhere she could get in current state was anywhere near as dangerous as where she’s moving away from. So she continues on autopilot, letting her feet take her wherever they felt like as she tried to scrape enough of herself together to care about...something, anything, that could help her in her quest to sleep off the echoes of pain running through her system.

Catra had no idea what she had done to receive such intense punishment. Then again this wouldn’t be the first time the witch hurt her just for the pleasure of making someone hurt. Though she was aware, dimly, that it was rare for a session to be long enough and intense enough to affect her memory like this, she could hardly remember anything through the pain, but she couldn’t remember the last few days at all. Her sick humor noting how worthless punishment was for correcting behavior if she was left without the ability to recall what behavior needed to be corrected in the first place. It failed to get a laugh out of her, her body already aware that it would hurt far too much to be worth it.

It’s with world shattering shock and no shortage of relief when she hears Adora’s soft call, bringing enough awareness to Catra to notice she’s standing in the door of their hideaway. It was an old supply room tucked deep in the unused sectors of the Fright Zone and buried behind some pipes. They changed the door code to what has become Catra’s favorite number and made the place theirs and only theirs, safe and hidden away.

“Cat?” Adora’s voice was soft, worried, clearly she knew where Catra had been and was worried for her but there was also a note of fear. They must have been doing whatever it was together, leaving the blonde scared for her own safety as well. Catra’s met with the usual mix of relief and bitter jealousy that her friend got out of this unscathed.

As Catra took the first couple stumbling steps into the hideout and Adora registered who was at the door the magicat got to watch a look of relief, care, and hope bloom across the face of the girl she loves, a warm and soft expression promising gentle care to come. Catra was consumed, then, by the understanding that this was a blessed day. It was rare for Adora to show her open affection anymore, even in their hideout, even on bad pain days, even when Catra was so clearly overstimulated. Not since Shadow Weaver started to correct those behaviors more harshly.

“Hey, Kitty. Come here.” Adora stood and took the last couple steps separating the two, taking Catra in her arms enough to help her sit. An action Catra realized had been necessary when her knees gave out shortly into the descent. Adora didn’t let her fall or even falter, her touch as gentle and caring as the rest of her even as her insistent strength eased Catra down.

Adora pulled Catra practically into her lap, shushing her and muttering little notes of praise as she adjusted them so that some of the recently cleaned floor was in front of Catra and Adora could begin to pet her hair with the hand that wasn’t keeping her up. Catra let herself get lost in the sensations, an unnoticed purr starting up as she leaned into the taller girl and slowly pulled herself together.

It took some time for her awareness to come back enough and thoughts to clear enough that Catra was convinced she could attempt speech again. When she was finally coherent enough she noticed that they had shifted, half laid back against a pile of stolen blankets and sandbags, but still with cleaned floor in front of her and just to Adora’s side as the whole of Catra was tucked up under Adora’s chin and in her lap. Catra let the purr continue as she wetted her lips and swallowed before attempting a shaky greeting.

“Hey Adora. How long…?” Her voice was ragged from her earlier screaming, and it hurt to use.

“Just a couple of minutes.” Adora’s tone was patient and understanding. It was no surprise that she knew what Catra was asking, she always understood best. But then she asked something that surprised and confused Catra back out of her fragile coherency.

“Do you have it?” As Catra looked to her in confusion Adora clarified. “I’m so sorry, Cat, but we have to be quick, we have to burn them away from here before she tracks them down. This was your plan, I’m just repeating what you told me to say. Do you have the papers? Is anything in your pockets?”

Adora’s tone was soft but insistent, and she gave Catra comforting little squeezes to emphasise the importance of certain points while she talked but Catra was still as baffled as before. Still, she’d do anything for this girl, so she checked. Her pockets were empty but tucked into the fluff between her breasts were a few crumpled pieces of paper she didn’t recognize, didn’t remember.

Adora took them and quickly smoothed them out, frantically looking at them it was clear that Adora had no idea what she was looking for, and Catra didn’t either. The pages were covered in a language that Catra’d never seen before, with some sort of sigil every few pages, also like nothing she’d ever read before.

Somehow she understood them. It was shaky, like her dwindling memory of her mother tongue, from before the Horde took her in. She could mostly only piece together rough meanings and string them into loose ideas, but it was enough to scare her. Something extremely strange was going on. She motioned for Adora to stop on one of them, a long winding passage about death and dark magic next to a sigil that all seemed important somehow, though she couldn’t place how.

“Is this it? Is this the one?” Adora’s voice was still soft but more eager now, excited for some reason. Wrapped in pain and confusion it was even harder for Catra to make sense of anything that was before her, but a quick review of the other pages revealed that this was the only spell sigil that didn’t have a clawmark through it. She didn’t remember doing that, either, but the message to herself was clear, whatever they had been trying to do, this had been part of it.

But what did that have to do with anything now?

She nodded anyway, though it was unnecessary, Adora had noticed the same marks after Catra started to check them. Already Adora was shifting so that the paper was between them on the floor. Catra was still too tired and too consumed by her pain to feel embarrassed by the needy mewl that left her as Adora moved away.

Adora’s expression was open, excited, and sweet as she took Catra’s hands between her own in the space above the paper. Her eye contact was more intense than either of them were usually comfortable with as she hurried to explain something.

“This is really important, Kitty. I need you to do something and you told me not to waste time explaining.” When had she...? But Adora Continued. “You need to trace this sigil as closely as you can with your claw without cutting into it while focusing as entirely as you can on something else, do you think you’re recovered enough to do that?” For Adora Catra would gladly try and she noticed she was nodding before she had even fully processed the request.

The smile she got in return was one that she hadn’t seen in years, innocent and unabashedly happy, eager and free. It was worth the worst Shadow Weaver could do to her.

“Perfect, Kitty. You told me to tell you to focus on how I make you feel, that it comes strongest and most easily when you’re thinking of me. You said to tell you to focus on the memory of when you saved me from that bot in our junior cadet graduation exam.”

Catra remembered that feeling. Pride, power, certainty that she would be able to  _ make  _ things be ok, the desire to protect… and love. It was a sense of love being acted upon that was so satisfying, relieving, and that made her happy to be able to do. Love, not as mere emotion, but as an action, a type of joyous resolve expressing itself and feeding into itself as it made Adora happy and safe.

Catra was embarrassed that she even might have told Adora about what that feeling was, but she didn’t have the capacity yet to worry about this and do what Adora asked at the same time, and she decided that following through on whatever plan Adora was echoing back was more important at the moment.

So Catra took a breath, and tried to clear her thoughts. It proved easier than usual in her current state.

She began.

With her focus so firmly on trying to hold on to that feeling she was able to keep herself from startling when the lines she began to trace with her claw remained glowing in place. It made it easy, however, to see what still had to be traced, and so she worked quickly and deftly to finish the sigil. It didn’t take long, she had strong artistic skill and impressive manual dexterity for as long as she could remember, it’s what made her take to art so quickly.

As she carved the sigil into the air some part of her noticed a new smell filling the air, something that she couldn’t remember, but that also smelled as familiar as their squadmates. It smelled warm, safe. It smelled like magic, but she knew she’d never been around anything but Shadow Weaver’s darkest magics, and this wasn’t that. She put it out of her mind to think about later.

Once the sigil was complete she could feel it, tugging at her, energy built up and waiting for release, for all the energy she was willing to give it, and for some sort of direction or shape she didn’t understand and couldn’t give it. She looked to Adora in confusion and found her staring with wonder and pride. At her, with pride. It was enough to shake her concentration and cause the sigil to falter and almost go out, but it refocused brighter than before as she recovered.

Noticing the question in Catra’s expression Adora whispered, as if this was a prank that would go off too early if she let herself be as loud as her excitement clearly made her want to be. She always did have trouble regulating her volume when excited, but she learned over time just how incredibly quiet she could get away with being when talking to Catra, and that helped in situations that required her to be careful. 

“Your last instruction was for this point in the plan. Focus on Tweek.” Catra winced at the mere reminder. “I know, Kitty. I’m sorry. But you told me to tell you to focus on him and pour as much energy and emotion into that drawing as you can when you release it. Can you do that?”

Catra nodded, more wary this time, but somehow she knew that the hard part was done. So she looked back at the sigil, the rune, and felt her connection with it, its eagerness to be released. Before she could second guess it or her pain could flare up again and ruin everything she reigned in her focus and summoned as much of that love as she could, and she let herself remember. His smell, the texture of his fur, the little squeak he made when she was able to give him pieces of stolen ration bars, the weird way his nose would move to the side when he realized it was her almost in greeting...and how much she loved him, too.

With shape and direction the emotion poured into the rune had it feeling like it was pulling at her, straining to be held back. So she let it off its leash and poured as much of herself as she could into it. As the spell completed Catra could feel the energy rushing out of her, and yet more rushing through her from somewhere else, her body taken past any experience it had at channeling this kind of magic and drained of its stores. But it didn’t hurt and it didn’t leave her tired. It left her feeling powerful, proud, pleasant, and somehow more energized than when she started. Like something about the process was good for her body in its battered state, like she had taken a dose of the good painkillers from the infirmary, like all the energy taken from her body was replaced with even more and fresher energy from elsewhere. She felt the same thrill as the junior cadet graduation exam, and just as filled with love. She felt as if her Love had done more than any actual magic had.

The rune exploded into light as it activated and Catra felt the energy flowing through her and out of her, felt something in her be touched by it, and smelled as its scent changed for a brief moment before it went rushing out of the room, leaving her and Adora in suspense as they could both tell it wasn’t finished, but didn’t know what would happen next. In the wake of the spell Catra could feel her fur standing on end and tail bushed up as it stood straight, but she knew the look of awe on her own face and excited tilt of her ears betrayed her excitement.

Catra looked up at Adora and noticed as her friend took in a sharp breath upon meeting her gaze, a look of fear slipping in behind her expression, just a little. She must have seen the magicat’s reaction because she rushed to explain

“Your eyes, they turned black. From the outside up until just outside the pupil, so there’s just a small slice of color before the slit. You warned me there’d be some sort of physical effect on you for a bit after...but it’s still shocking to actually see.”

Catra didn’t have long to sit in that confusion, as shadows began to pour into the room from all sides. They were small, wispy, and moving fast, hundreds of scraps of dark all collapsing on the point between the girls, the spot the rune had been mere moments before. They watched, amazed as ash collected into bones that were wrapped in shadows till they disappeared, a form of solid darkness carving itself out of them.

It stopped as suddenly as it started, and Catra was left with the smell. It wasn’t the same as when she was drawing the rune, tainted, darkened since it was unleashed. It had the sharp sting of Shadow Weaver’s magic, but it was different somehow. Laced with that familiar smell that was there before, yes, but even the new note was fundamentally different than Shadow Weaver’s dark magics. It didn’t smell like anything specific she could name, but even that still had a way of reminding her of the feeling of being home. Like fighting with Adora to convince her to take care of herself, teaching Kyle’s bullies from other squads a lesson, Adora’s blood when Catra scratched her on accident while they were playing, and beating Lonnie in training to prove the girl wrong. Darker, true, but no less filled with love.

Under it all was the smell of Tweek.

It was as that set in that two glowing blue embers appeared as if eyes opening and she realized the shape the shadows had taken. As the little figure looked up at her, he shifted his nose to the right and moved to stand against her, little forpaws patting against her knee in a request to be picked up. It was Tweek, alive again. Well, in a sense. It was as she picked him up that it really set in. she could smell him, hear his little squeaks and even his breathing and some facsimile of a heartbeat, could feel his fur, but he was too light, and the unnaturally dark fur flickered at the edges and made his shape harder to determine than before.

She didn’t care, she had him back and she could already feel herself crying as she held her pet rat in her hands.

Catra looked to Adora in awe, much of her still in denial of what just happened, who she was holding. Adora was already crying as she looked at them. True, she didn’t spend as much time with Tweek, she wasn’t as attached, but she knew how much he had meant to Catra. Proof she could care about something, could love and be loved by something, proof that she was strong enough to look after something, protect and take care of him. When she was still convinced it wasn’t safe to even think about how Adora made her feel she found a way to learn how to love while taking care of this cute little thief.

She had started taking care of him while she was still young, after finding him abandoned as a baby, feeding him crumbs off her ration bars in a hidden corner of the Fright Zone and even teaching him a couple of tricks. All before she learned the true meaning of the word that Shadow Weaver had already started to use to define Catra: “Pet”. It was a shock to realize that the word her young mind had, in ignorance, accepted as a description of her relationship with Adora was comparing her to an animal with a relationship defined by dependence. But Tweek himself had helped her come to terms with it, through the love in the bond they shared, how he was clearly happy to see her every time and how much she cared for him. It meant that even if Shadow Weaver was right, it didn’t mean Adora didn’t care, wouldn’t keep her promise. At that young an age, she didn’t understand yet that the way she was starting to care about Adora and wanted to be cared about by her was fundamentally different than how she cared for Tweek, and by the time she admitted the truth to herself she had learned to ignore the witch’s words as nothing but meaningless cruelty.

She held him close, careful not to hurt him as she began to pet his fur. Adora stood as Tweek began to lick at her cheek and tears, a feeling she was beginning to think was lost to her and which yielded yet more happy tears.

“Hey, Kitty. I’m so happy for you, and proud of you. There’s one last step to the plan and then I'll explain everything, I promise. I just need to make sure these pages are incinerated in one of the further foundries. Don’t worry, you showed me one of your shortcuts, so it won’t take me long, but I’ll give you two a bit of time together, that sound ok?”

Catra felt herself nodding absently and with a final smile Adora took off.

Sitting there, petting Tweek and feeling his tongue again did wonders for the pain in her body, she felt so much lighter. However alone as they were she was left with a few dawning realizations.

She had done magic. She thought it was impossible, Shadow Weaver had made that painfully clear and painfully memorable the one time she dared to ask. Then again she knew Shadow Weaver lied all the time, especially when it advanced her twisted plans or hurt Catra. Adora had said she would explain, so Catra decided to trust that and set that aside.

Tweek didn’t have a physical body anymore. He wasn’t quite the same as the witch’s shadow spies, but he was clearly similar, and some distant part of her that must have read the paper more thoroughly knew why. He didn’t have a body to resurrect. All that was left after Shadow Weaver’s punishment was his bones, the witch had made  _ sure  _ of that. He was back, that didn’t matter, and she didn’t want to think about it. So she didn’t.

It hit her all at once when she finally spared it a thought, the names Adora had been calling her. “Cat,” a diminutive they kept to private spaces and hidden halls for want of something soft between themselves but hidden in fear of what the other cadets would do with it if they ever learned. Then there was “Kitty,” an even older nickname that they were all the more careful with after Shadow Weaver dedicated an entire week to trying to strip that from them and make sure that their main reaction to it would be fear. It was years before they were able to help each other get it back, and Adora saved it for their most intimate and vulnerable moments. When Catra needed assurance after the worst of their CO’s abuse or when Adora was far enough gone that she started having trouble forming words.

Shadow Weaver must have erased her memories. Catra shuddered with the thought. She’d seen it happen to Adora a few times, forced to watch as some of their time together was stripped from the other girl’s mind as punishment. More often she realized after the fact that it must have happened by talking to the girl after she had been in the Black Garnet chamber for most of the day. Catra had thought herself spared that particular punishment. She believed herself free of that kind of interference. It enraged her as much as it terrified her.

To keep herself from a breakdown she focused on the feelings of Tweek’s fur against hers again, refamiliarized herself with the pitch of his voice, and let herself bask in the love that brought him back and how much more she loved Adora for helping her with this.

It really wasn’t long before she returned, the door beeping Adora’s arrival as she shot Catra a shy smile and a quiet greeting. “Hey, Cat.” It was only then that Catra realized how loudly she’d been purring, and she let herself give a completely unguarded smile to the other girl, just this once. If Adora saw the truth in it, Catra was feeling good enough and safe enough to face that possibility. Though still not enough to put it into words.

As usual the beautiful dummy just smiled back as she brightened up and headed over.

“So, I promised I’d explain, right?”

Catra rolled her eyes as fondly as she could and tried her best to keep her smile at a mere smirk. “I can do magic, and I figured it out somehow and told you. Either before or after I told you I spent some time practicing with it and learning what I could. You obviously revealed that, what, this wasn’t the first time I told you? Shadow Weaver clearly took my memories today, so she’s probably done it before, and if I’m only learning about my magic now then it’s definitely one of the things she’s trying to keep from me. Where I lose it is how we came up with this plan and what I just did.”

Adora went from open-jawed shock to a smile that almost looked like she was proud of Catra in seconds.

“Yeah, you found it and experimented. With no actual Runes to practice with you skipped to what’s probably more advanced lessons in magic and experimented with what sorts of emotions, focus, materials, and other things affect your magic with nothing but the intensity of the glow and smell that your magic gives off when it doesn’t have a spell to give it shape to guide you. You came to me to tell me about it, proud and surprised and I was scared. That was the third time you trusted me with that knowledge, and while I dismissed it as merely weird the second time, I knew something was wrong this time.” Adora shakes her head at that, her expression having shifted to one more tempered in focus like when giving a report in classes, but at least it still had that excited gleam that meant she was enjoying the telling.

“There’s no way you could have brought it up like it was the first time three times. On top of that I knew about Shadow Weaver’s ability to take away memories.”

At this Catra interrupted. “Hold up, when did you learn about that if it wasn’t from this?”

All of the joy in Adora’s expression drained out. She motioned to their sandbag chairs in an unspoken request to sit with Catra that the magicat was happy to allow. As they settled against each other Adora visibly calmed at both the contact and the feeling of Catra’s purr rolling through them both. Catra offered her arm and Adora began to pet down the length absently as she got herself together, she had always focused best when she had something to do with her hands, and she had found repeating feelings like this soothing. Then again so did Catra, just to different degrees.

“You remember the big Command Placement Exam?”

Catra gave her friend her most unimpressed look. “Obviously not. So you’re telling me that Shadow Weaver  _ hadn’t  _ spent the whole day torturing me just to make me miss it?”

“Heh, yeah. You actually won the tournament. Beat a few of the instructors, too. First cadet to ever conquer all of the instructors, in fact.”

Somehow this was the most shocking news of the day to Catra. “You can’t really mean that. This isn’t some trick?”

Adora shook her head as a smile started to creep back into her expression. “I would never lie about something this important. Shadow Weaver punished me for losing to you by making me watch as she took it from you.” Her expression had already turned more morose than Catra had seen since --- it doesn’t matter, he’s back now. “I heard afterwards that she told Hordak that you cheated.” The slightest hint of fire awakened in her expression as she continued. “I also heard he refused to throw out your scores, something about anyone crafty enough to trick the instructors was crafty enough to trick enemy commanders. Apparently he thinks your dishonest style of command has value in the Horde.”

“Obviously, any strategy that maximizes enemy losses while minimizing allied supply expenditure and troop loss is a strategy worth considering. It’s not my fault that tricking someone into fighting the wrong battle is such an effective strategy.”

Catra was rewarded with the laugh she was aiming for, the laugh that she loved so much. With a roll of her eyes Adora was quick to jump back into her story.

“Obviously. Anyway, since I knew it was a possibility I told you and we spent some time comparing what memories we knew the other lost. That was a pretty terrible week. It ended with us resolving to keep your magic secret as we tried to figure it out ourselves. It was slow going, especially since you won’t tell me what this ‘ideal frame of mind for casting’ actually is, but eventually you got this idea.”

Adora looked directly into Catra’s eyes and the magicat felt her tail wrap around Adora’s waist in response.

“An idea for something we could  _ take back _ from Shadow Weaver.”

And with that Adora’s grin turned downright wicked. It looked alien on the sweet idiot’s face, but the context was enough that the chill that ran down Catra’s spine was excitement rather than fear. Could Adora actually want her like --- it’s too much to gamble this victory like that.

“So naturally I insisted until you gave in.” she moved back to start the long process of relaxing again, it’s then that Catra noticed Tweek was licking at Adora’s arm affectionately. “You finally told me a bit about what you think about when doing magic, but only enough to get you to find it and not enough for me to figure it out.” She sighed, but only in resignation, old ground for the stubborn pair. “Anyway, most of this was your plan. A spell you saw her use to interrogate a dead rebellion soldier, a trip to the Black Garnet chamber that started with grabbing the pages and ended with a confrontation about what you suspected about your magic that covered up the real reason for your trip, and instructions you trusted me with to coach you through the casting. If we talk about it you’ll slowly start to get the memories back, that’s part of how you knew dark magic has a cost. It’s addicting, an added rush to the spellcasting like a drug that induces a form of withdrawal, but also it stains the body of the caster, longer and more visibly the more they use it in a short time.”

Adora glanced quickly at Catra, somehow not noticing Tweek’s strangely affectionate behavior. “Your eyes are already turning back to normal, you should be fine by tomorrow. Apparently the cost of dark magic is less intense with animals and even less intense with inanimate objects. Unfortunately without a body to inhabit…” With that she finally looked down and noticed Tweek, but Catra was too busy spiralling to think about what that meant.

Of course there wasn’t a body. Nothing but bones were left. Shadow Weaver made sure of that. Once Catra’s will finally broke to the shock collar and her hunger ---

“Hey, Kitty.” Catra’s head snapped up to lock eyes with the only girl she could imagine trusting to walk her through this insane plan. “He’s back. You’re safe. I’m safe. We’re ok. I promise.” Adora shifted so she could hold Catra closer and pet her hair. “Relax, Kitty, I’ve got you. I’m here and we don’t have to stay here forever, first chance we get we can just leave. We don’t deserve what she’s done to us, no one deserves what she’s done to us.”

It’s with a watery laugh and strung out voice that Catra responds. “ _ She _ might.”

It’s with patience and understanding that Adora accepts it as the joke it’s meant to be with a noncommittal hum and a, “maybe,” that certainly meant a soft and understanding ‘no’.

Catra focuses on Tweek in her arms and is shocked at how much of a relief it is to have him back, how much she still loves him. It’s once she’s calm that Adora continues cautiously.

“You know. The reason he looks like that is the spell needed something to make him out of, but what it means is that he’s more like a shadow spy than the spell would otherwise render him.” She took a moment to judge Catra’s lack of reaction. “So you should be connected now, able to hear each other remotely, able to share senses with the right spell, able to talk through him with the right spell…” Another moment to gauge the potential reaction. “and his behavior will be influenced by your feelings.” She hurried her explanation as Catra froze, her hackles immediately up and tail lashing. “It’s just a tiny bit, he’s still himself.”

A moment’s pause. “Maybe that’s not why I’m scared.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”


End file.
